Legal

Copyrighted Materials Policy

This page outlines HASH's Copyrighted Materials Policy operates, and is designed for both recipients of Copyright (Takedown) Notices issued by HASH, and rights-holders looking to issue such notices.

As with all legal matters, it is always best to consult with a professional about your specific questions or situation. We strongly encourage you to do so before taking any action that might impact your rights. This policy outlines our process for handling complaints regarding copyrighted content (in particular under the DMCA), and is not itself legal advice, nor should it be taken as such.

What is the DMCA?

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (or DMCA) is a law which HASH is subject to, designed to provide safe harbor for service providers that host user-generated content. Without it, since even a single claim of copyright infringement can carry statutory damages of up to $150,000, the possibility of being held liable for user-generated content could be very harmful for service providers such as HASH. With potential damages multiplied across millions of users, cloud-computing and user-generated content sites like YouTube, GitHub or HASH could probably not exist without the DMCA (or at least not without passing some of that cost downstream to their users).

How does the DMCA work?

So long as a service provider follows the DMCA's notice-and-takedown rules, it won't be liable for copyright infringement based on user-generated content. Because of this, it is important for HASH to maintain its DMCA safe-harbor status, and on this page we both explain how copyright-holders can issue us with a Copyright Notice (such as DMCA Notice), how we'll respond to it, and how impacted users can take action if they feel they've been unfairly affected by an improper Copyright Notice.

The DMCA provides two simple, straightforward procedures that all HASH users should know about: (i) a takedown-notice procedure for copyright holders to request that content be removed; and (ii) a counter-notice procedure for users to get content reenabled when content is taken down by mistake or misidentification.

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DMCA takedown notices are used by copyright owners to ask HASH to take down content they believe to be infringing. Whether you're a simulation engineer or a 3D artist, you likely create copyrighted content every day. If someone else is using your copyrighted content in an unauthorized manner on HASH you can send us a DMCA takedown notice to request that the infringing content be changed or removed.
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DMCA counter notices, on the other hand, can be used to correct mistakes. Maybe the person sending the takedown notice does not hold the copyright, or did not realize that you have a license, or made some other mistake in their takedown notice. Since HASH usually cannot know if there has been a mistake, the DMCA counter notice allows you to let us know and ask that we put the content back up.

The Copyright notice and takedown process should be used only for complaints about copyright infringement. Notices sent through our DMCA process must identify copyrighted work or works that are allegedly being infringed. The process cannot be used for other complaints, such as complaints about alleged trademark infringement or sensitive data; we offer separate processes for those situations.

A. How Does This Actually Work?

The DMCA framework is a bit like passing notes in class. The copyright owner hands HASH a complaint about a user. If it's written correctly, we pass the complaint along to the user. If the user disputes the complaint, they can pass a note back saying so. HASH exercises little discretion in the process other than determining whether the notices meet the minimum requirements of the DMCA. It is up to the parties (and their lawyers) to evaluate the merit of their claims, bearing in mind that notices must be made under penalty of perjury.

Here are the basic steps in the process.

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Copyright Owner Investigates. A copyright owner should always conduct an initial investigation to confirm both (a) that they own the copyright to an original work and (b) that the content on HASH is unauthorized and infringing. This includes confirming that the use is not protected as fair use. A particular use may be fair if it only uses a small amount of copyrighted content, uses that content in a transformative way, uses it for educational purposes, or some combination of the above. Because code naturally lends itself to such uses, each use case is different and must be considered separately. Example: An employee of Acme Web Company finds one of the company's proprietary datasets in a HASH repository. Acme Web Company licenses some of its datasets out to a small number of trusted partners. Before sending in a take-down notice, Acme should review those licenses and its agreements to confirm that the dataset on HASH is not authorized under any of them.
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Copyright Owner Sends A Notice. After conducting an investigation, a copyright owner prepares and sends a takedown notice to HASH. Assuming the takedown notice is sufficiently detailed according to the statutory requirements (as explained in the how-to guide), we will post the notice to our public repository and pass the link along to the affected user.
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HASH Asks User to Make Changes. If the notice alleges that the entire contents of an Index listing or shared Library file/folder infringe, we will skip to Step 6 and disable the entire listing/file/folder expeditiously. Otherwise we will contact the user who created the repository and give them approximately 24 hours to delete or modify the content specified in the notice. We'll notify the copyright owner if and when we give the user a chance to make changes.
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User Notifies HASH of Changes. If the user chooses to make the specified changes, they must tell us so within the approximately 24-hour window. If they don't, we will disable the repository (as described in Step 6). If the user notifies us that they made changes, we will verify that the changes have been made and then notify the copyright owner.
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Copyright Owner Revises or Retracts the Notice. If the user makes changes, the copyright owner must review them and renew or revise their takedown notice if the changes are insufficient. HASH will not take any further action unless the copyright owner contacts us to either renew the original takedown notice or submit a revised one. If the copyright owner is satisfied with the changes, they may either submit a formal retraction or else do nothing. HASH will interpret silence longer than two weeks as an implied retraction of the takedown notice.
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HASH May Disable Access to the Content. HASH will disable a user's content if: (i) the copyright owner has alleged copyright over the user's entire repository (as noted in Step 3); (ii) the user has not made any changes after being given an opportunity to do so (as noted in Step 4); or (iii) the copyright owner has renewed their takedown notice after the user had a chance to make changes. If the copyright owner chooses instead to revise the notice, we will go back to Step 2 and repeat the process as if the revised notice were a new notice.
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User May Send A Counter Notice. We encourage users who have had content disabled to consult with a lawyer about their options. If a user believes that their content was disabled as a result of a mistake or misidentification, they may send us a counter notice. As with the original notice, we will make sure that the counter notice is sufficiently detailed (as explained in the how-to guide). If it is, we will post it to our public repository and pass the notice back to the copyright owner by sending them the link.
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Copyright Owner May File a Legal Action. If a copyright owner wishes to keep the content disabled after receiving a counter notice, they will need to initiate a legal action seeking a court order to restrain the user from engaging in infringing activity relating to the content on HASH. In other words, you might get sued. If the copyright owner does not give HASH notice within 10-14 days, by sending a copy of a valid legal complaint filed in a court of competent jurisdiction, HASH will reenable the disabled content.

B. What About Forks? (or What's a Fork?)

One of the best features of HASH is the ability for users to "fork" one another's simulations and files. What does that mean? In essence, it means that users can make a copy of a project on HASH into their own repositories. As the license or the law allows, users can then make changes to that fork to either push back to the main project or just keep as their own variation of a project. Each of these copies is a "fork" of the original repository, which in turn may also be called the "parent" of the fork.

HASH will not automatically disable forks when disabling a parent repository. This is because forks belong to different users, may have been altered in significant ways, and may be licensed or used in a different way that is protected by the fair-use doctrine. HASH does not conduct any independent investigation into forks. We expect copyright owners to conduct that investigation and, if they believe that the forks are also infringing, expressly include forks in their takedown notice.

C. What If I Inadvertently Missed the Window to Make Changes?

We recognize that there are many valid reasons that you may not be able to make changes within the approximate 24-hour window we provide before your repository gets disabled. Maybe our message got flagged as spam, maybe you were on vacation, maybe you don't check that email account regularly, or maybe you were just busy. We get it. If you respond to let us know that you would have liked to make the changes, but somehow missed the first opportunity, we will re-enable the repository one additional time for approximately 24 hours to allow you to make the changes. Again, you must notify us that you have made the changes in order to keep the repository enabled after that 24-hour window, as noted above in Step A.4. Please note that we will only provide this one additional chance.

D. Transparency

We believe that transparency is a virtue. The public should know what content is being removed from HASH and why. An informed public can notice and surface potential issues that would otherwise go unnoticed in an opaque system. We post redacted copies of any legal notices we receive (including original notices, counter notices or retractions) at github.com/hasharchives/takedowns. We will not publicly publish your personal contact information; we will remove personal information (except for usernames in URLs) before publishing notices. We will not, however, redact any other information from your notice unless you specifically ask us to. When we remove content, we will post a link to the related notice in its place.

Please also note that, although we will not publicly publish unredacted notices, we may provide a complete unredacted copy of any notices we receive directly to any party whose rights would be affected by it.

E. Repeated Infringement

It is the policy of HASH, in appropriate circumstances and in its sole discretion, to disable and terminate the accounts of users who may infringe upon the copyrights or other intellectual property rights of HASH or others.

F. Submitting Notices

If you are ready to submit a notice or a counter notice:

Learn more and speak up

If you poke around the Internet, it is not too hard to find commentary and criticism about the copyright system in general and the DMCA in particular. Our colleagues at GitHub have published a number of thoughtful pieces on this issue. We join them in acknowledging and appreciating the important role that the DMCA has played in promoting innovation online, but share a belief that copyright laws themselves could probably benefit from being updated. Simulations and datasets are constantly being improved and updated. Technology and the web have changed a lot since 1998 when the DMCA was written.

We don't have all the answers and the range of opinions and proposals regarding reform are wide. For those with an interest in delving further into the topic, here are a number of influential pieces:

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Unintended Consequences: Twelve Years Under the DMCA (Electronic Frontier Foundation)
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Statutory Damages in Copyright Law: A Remedy in Need of Reform (William & Mary Law Review)
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Is the Term of Protection of Copyright Too Long? (The 1709 Blog)
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If We're Going to Change DMCA's 'Notice & Takedown,' Let's Focus on How Widely It's Abused (TechDirt)
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Opportunities for Copyright Reform (Cato Unbound)
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Fair Use Doctrine and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act: Does Fair Use Exist on the Internet Under the DMCA? (Santa Clara Law Review)

HASH doesn't necessarily endorse any of the viewpoints in those articles. We provide the links to encourage you to learn more, form your own opinions, and then reach out to your elected representative(s) to seek whatever changes you think should be made.

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